Is there a way to break them down? Let's say I have X liters of contaminated water I want to drink, how can I clean it, preferably without expensive or difficult to obtain equipment?
Here's what works:
> The following processes were found to be effective for the removal of PFOS: GAC (up to > 99 percent removal), membrane separation - high pressure membranes such as nanofiltration and reverse osmosis (up to > 99 percent removal), anion exchange (up to > 99 percent removal), and powdered activated carbon (up to 99 percent removal).
https://tdb.epa.gov/tdb/contaminant?id=10940
Distillation is also said to work since these nasties have very high boilings points. Just don't run out of water in your distiller and let the temps get really high.
> The electrochemical oxidation system used boron-doped diamond electrodes, in a process breaking down the contaminants’ formidable molecular bonds and cleaning the water while systematically destroying the hazardous compounds
It's possible filtration may remove some of it, but this appears to be the only way to completely break it down at commercial scale.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
here's a study that found that brita-filtered water contained more bacteria than the tap water only a week into the filter's service life: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8740859/
I used to be a religious brita user, but now I just stick to tap. hard to assess the relative risk, but it's cheaper than buying filters.
I use Zerowater and I can tell when it gets a slight smell (bacteria I assume) , I just change the filter at that point even if it hasn't been ~3 months.
Unless the bacteria is actively causing harm or a variety known to be harmful to humans I'd still rather take my chances with the filters.
like I said, hard for me to do a good comparison of the relative risk, but that sounds pretty bad too. some bacteria is normal, but this is like drinking from a stream vs drinking from standing water.
Some volatile compounds may get through though.